USA continues search for remains of missing soldiers and airmen.

August 14, 2008
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Nakai District - Khammouan Province - Lao Peoples Democratic Republic

Last year I was down in Nong District in Savanakhet Province during the rainy season and just missed crossing paths with an American military team that was in the Laos looking for the remains of American service personnel missing since the end of the Indochina War.  I commonly use the phrase “missing and presumed dead” but do so knowing that there are some Americans who take offense at the presumption of death when no physical remains have been found.

Although the camp created by the Americans was located just a few kilometers from our work camp, I never met any members of that team.   Their standard operating procedure is to work during the dry season and suspend work during the rainy season.  I arrived just after the rains had started and the team had already departed.

This year I’m back in an area where the search teams have been active in the past, but again, we are on opposite schedules.

However, I did see an article in the Vientiane Times, Laos’ English language newspaper that announced some modest success for the team during this year’s search. Here’s what that paper told readers about the most recent American efforts:

Vientiane Times

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

“Bones and other relics thought to belong to missing American soldiers who died in Laos during the Indochinese War have been sent by the Lao government to the American government for examination.

The remains will be presented to family members once they have been identified, according to a press release from the Lao-American Task Force.

The return of the remains is part of the implementation of the government’s humanitarian policy towards American people and missing soldiers’ families and is in accordance with requests from the American government.

The Lao-American Task Force, in collaboration with local authorities, undertook the fifth joint action plan from June 2007 to July 2008 to recover remains of missing soldiers.

Workers recovered one set of remains in Xiengkhor district, Huaphan province, and two sets each in Viengxay district, Huaphan province, and Paek district, Xieng Khuang province.

The remains of 227 American soldiers have been returned home, out of a total of 573 reported missing by the American government.”

Regular readers of my journal might remember that I posted a blog last year that discussed issues related to the search for American remains.  I would refer readers to that posting for additional facts and opinions.  Please see my journal entry for February 14, 2008.

By way of elaboration I can add a few facts to the article cited above.  First, although the article makes reference to the remains of “American soldiers,” the fact is that almost all personnel reported as missing in Laos during the war were pilots from various branches of the military service, or civilian contractors hired by the CIA and flying for Air America or another of the agency’s proprietary airlines.

Remains found in Xieng Khuang Province might have been those of land forces, since there were American advisors working on the ground in that region during the war, most were CIA agents advising the Hmong forces fighting under the leadership of General Vang Pao.  American pilots also served in the region providing support to ground forces, and transporting civilian refugees from place to place.  (There were times when daily air traffic in and out of Long Cheng, the secret air base in Xieng Khuang, was so heavy that that airfield was one of the busiest in the world!)

The human remains found in Huaphan Province are, most likely, those of pilots and crew lost during American bombing raids over the province.  (Huaphan Province, then called Sam Nua Province, was the primary staging area for North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces fighting in northern Laos).

Remains found in Viengxay District are almost certainly those of pilots and crew who would have been attacking enemy strongholds in the region.  Viengxay District is the location of the extensive cave complex in which the Pathet Lao leadership sheltered and lived throughout most of the war.  I’ve visited this area and have observed that it is one of the most heavily cratered parts of the country, a testament to the fact that it was a frequent target of American warplanes.

All of the locations cited in the newspaper article are well north of that part of Laos where most American personnel were lost, namely the areas in Bolikhamsai, Khammouan, and Savanakhet Provinces where American pilots frequently bombed segments of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in a futile attempt to interdict the flow of troops and material moving from north to south.

The United States continues to spend far more money each year searching for the remains of missing Americans than it does helping Laos to remove the unexploded ordnance that is a result of the war.

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